Gee Atherton closed the gap on UCI World Cup Downhill series leader Greg Minnaar by storming to victory in round four of the competition in Champery, Switzerland.
Continuing his fine form from the first three World Cup rounds, Gee earned his second win of the year on the steep, technical course and reduced Minnaar's advantage to just 13 points with two rounds left to race.
Taking a cautious approach to his qualifying run Gee did enough to take third place and bagged some valuable points against his South African rival, who ended up in 15th spot.
Plagued by bad weather all weekend the Champery course looked more like a battlefield than a race track with the three days of heavy rain in the lead up to Saturday's finals not helping matters.
When the race runs got underway, it was Minnaar who set the early pace with an impressive time of 4m 04.98s, which none of the subsequent riders were able to match – that is until Atherton hit the course.
Riding solidly, Gee hit the first split 1.78 seconds up on the South African and in the middle sector he kept his momentum going and increased that lead to 3.85s.
Stalling slightly as he entered the final woods, Gee was still looking good to better Minnaar's time and he flew into the finish arena to take the top spot with a time of 4m 02.19s.
Second placed qualifier Damian Spagnolo failed to match his earlier performance, which left only fastest qualifier Sam Blenkinsop to topple the Brit.
Down by over three seconds at the first interval Blenkinsop failed to improve throughout the run and eventually finished fourth.
Gee jumped from the hot seat with the realisation that he'd taken his second World Cup win of the year, a win made even sweeter by the fact that he was holding the Atherton fort as the sole rider at the event, due to injuries to siblings Dan and Rachel.
"My run was far from great but I don't expect anyone's was down there," Atherton said. "It was way more physical than qualifying with the mud making the bikes feel so heavy".
Gee next looks to the venue of his 2008 World Championship win, Val di Sole for the next round of the series. The long technical course in Italy suits Gee's attacking style and he'll be looking to close that gap further with just two rounds to go.
For more on Gee, Dan and Rachel Atherton, head over to The Atherton Project 
Sven Martin
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